a website devoted to radical, unconventional and experimental fiction with a particular focus on the rise of modernism and its aftermath.

Twenty years elapsed between William Gaddis's debutnovel The Recognitions (1955) and his follow-up bookJR (1975). Don’t blame Gaddis for laziness. Duringthat period, he needed to work a series of demandingday gigs to pay his bills, earning his keep from IBM, theUS Army, Eastman Kodak and other big organizationsto compensate for the royalty checks that never arrived. When interviewer Malcom Bradburytold Gaddis, years later, how he andall his friends recognized the brillianceof The Recognitions when it was firstpublished, the author tartly responded:"My royalty statements were $4.72."Did Bradbury’s clique, he wondered,simply pass around the same one ortwo copies.

Okay, JR was a long time coming. ButMr. Gaddis starts up his second novelexactly where he left off with TheRecognitions. His debut bookended with a composer struggling toovercome a creative block and un-expectedly causing a grand calamitywhen he finally finishes his project. In JR we soon meeta similar character, Edward Bast, who like so manyGaddis protagonists, can never make much headwayon his artistic projects. Like Stanley in The Recognitions,Bast inadvertently causes mayhem and disaster on his wayto achieving—or, more often, finding ways to avoid achieving—his goals as a composer.

But the continuity with The Recognitions is even moremarked when we consider the tone of the work. Gaddisoften complained that critics and readers did notappreciate the comic elements in his debut novel. But,in truth, The Recognitions starts out as a twisted existentialnarrative, and only gradually evolves, over the course ofalmost one thousand pages, into a equally twisted workof dark humor. In JR, in contrast, the comic element isevident from the outset, and continues for the entireduration of the book. Indeed, Gaddis seems willing toput every kind of gag, joke and stunt in this novel. Wehave malapropisms, slapstick, satire, parody, even asection of a hundred pages or so that tries to recreatethe stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers’ A Nightat the Opera.

Much of this humor is still timely today. Critics of thecurrent shift from face-to-face teaching to online courseswill find much to enjoy in this novel's depiction of a 1970sschool that spends large sums of grant money on ahalf-baked program to instruct students via televisionbroadcasts. In a similar manner, Gaddis's sendoff ofcorrupt politicians, obfuscating lawyers and crasscorporate execs shows that some things never change,even if they should. And those still suffering from thehousing and mortgage meltdown of recent times willlaugh, or perhaps cry, at Gaddis's presentation of asimilar financial collapse—caused by the marketmachinations of an over-reaching eleven-year-oldoperating out of a payphone.

JR, our precocious corporate kingpin, drives our storyas well as the financial markets, and ranks among thestrangest characters in 20th century American fiction. This youngster starts with modest ambitions, tradingnovelties and magazines with fellow classmates, butsoon learns that his skill at arbitrage can earn greaterrewards in the world of grown-ups. JR lacks social gracesand his intelligence is limited to money matters, but evenhe realizes that the titans of commerce don't want todeal with preteens. So he enlists, the down-and-outcomposer Edward Bast, and a host of other inter-mediaries, to serve as fronts for his businesstransactions.

When one deals is finished, JR rolls the proceeds onto another one, like a gambler who lets everything rideon the casino gaming table. When asked to justify hisceaseless ambition, the child offers a simple explanation: "You can’t just play to play because the rules are only forif you’re playing to win which that’s the only rules thereare." Or put even in fewer words: "I didn't invent it I meanthis is what you do."

JR knows a considerable amount about business,despite his tender years. And Gaddis clearly doesas well. I've read many novels about business, buthaven't encountered any work of fiction that gets so deeplyinto tax-loss carryforwards, accelerated depreciation,restrictions on the exercise of stock options, equity-for-debt swaps and a host of other arcane topics thatnovelists rarely have any reason to understand. Mostof the jargon and marketplace minutiae are tossed offin passing in these pages, and I'm sure many readers'eyes glaze over when Gaddis allows JR or anothercharacter to expound on the tactics and economicrationale for various wheelings and dealings. But giventhe shallowness of most depictions of high finance inmodern fiction, Gaddis’s attention to detail warrantspraise, especially given the comic nature of his book,where few would seek this degree of realism in the finerpoints.

But the real achievement in JR is in the dialogue. DidI mention that this novel consists almost entirely ofconversations? Yet this isn't your typical repartee. You may wonder how a book filled with dialogue onpractical matters, such as business, education andpolitics, ever got a reputation for being difficult to read. After all, how hard can it be to follow a discussion onsuch prosaic topics conducted by characters ofaverage intelligence? But Gaddis uses every possibletrick and device to make these conversations hardto follow. (See my related essay on "William Gaddis's8 Rules for Unruly Dialogue.") JR would demand ourrespect as a pathbreaking novel if only for the technicalmastery demonstrated in the construction of theseconvoluted colloquies. What Joyce did for stream-of-consciousness, Gaddis did for stream-of-speaking.

The result is a peculiar hybrid. The slapstick elementsof the humor—some of it markedly lowbrow, relying oncar collisions, broken plumbing, and other set-ups straightout of the aesthetic of the Three Stooges—don’t alwaysmix easily with the experimental intentions of the prose. I occasionally found myself laughing out loud at anespecially choice bit of comedy in these pages. But Isuspect that the longest lingering impression of JR won'tbe the one-liners, but rambling monologues and crazyfinancial transactions.

And, yes, JR himself. This child tycoon is the centerpieceof the novel. True, he is almost a parody of a parody. Even the most ridiculous characters out of Dickens, aMr. Micawber or Miss Havisham, seem staid andreasonable by comparison. Yet Gaddis somehowalso imparts a dose of humanity to JR, perhaps evena measure of pathos. In this one figure, the sometimescontrary ambitions of the novel—the darkness, the lightheartedness, the serious and the ludicrous—allcohere. Above all, JR is a distinctly Americacharacter,the heir to all those other troubled and troublingyoungsters in our homegrown fiction, from HuckleberryFinn to Holden Caulfield. These kids want to grow upon their own terms and in their own cussedly intransigentway. God bless 'em and God bless America, but watchout below!

And what can be more dispiriting, but also beguiling,than to find our national character so closely wedded tothe traits of dreaming and scheming youngsters? If weever grow up as a nation, this kind of book won't havemuch of an impact, and a character such as JR will belittle more than a puzzling anachronism. But the smartmoney—not that you find much of it in this book—saysthat JR keeps relevant for a long time to come.